Archive for the ‘Rants’ Category

Let’s talk a little bit about terrorism. What is terrorism? It used to be a somewhat covert, violent act against an enemy population, designed to incite terror through the realization that there is no protection against it, and they could strike at will. Small scale guerrilla warfare, but directed primarily against civilians.

But there’s many other forms of terrorism. How about the spreading news of something terrible, but relatively insignificant in terms of likelihood? Like, uh, say – oh, I don’t know – tularemia?

During 1990–2000, a total of 1,368 cases of tularemia were reported to CDC from 44 states, averaging 124 cases (range: 86–193) per year; 807 cases (59%) were reported as confirmed and 85 cases (6%) were reported as probable; the status of 476 cases is unknown. Most (91%) unclassified cases were reported during 1990–1992; all cases during 1990–1991 and 54% of cases from 1992 were not classified. The number of cases reported annually did not decrease substantially during the lapse in status as a notifiable disease during 1995–1999, but an increase in reporting occurred during 2000, when notifiable status was restored. Four states accounted for 56% of all reported tularemia cases: Arkansas (315 cases [23%]), Missouri (265 cases [19%]), South Dakota (96 cases [7%]), and Oklahoma (90 cases [7%]). – The CDC

Since rabbits are some of the most populous of neighborhood critters, this suggests that, perhaps, tularemia is not so common. It was relisted by the CDC in 2000 due to concern that it may be used in the creation of a bio-weapon. 14 years ago. Huh. So what makes this a headline today? Perhaps to keep a level of fear in those gullible enough to swallow it?

Besides: we all know how to truly weaponize a rabbit – and its manifestation seems about as likely as a bioweapon based on rabbit fever:

I know I’ve been silent for months. My self-imposed hiatus had more to do with my absolute disgust with the political and economic situations in the US and my absolute disdain for the players – I simply couldn’t give voice to what I was feeling: our media – our traitorous media, as a whole, needs to be purged. The Democratic party – the traitorous democratic party needs to seek its roots (not the ones in Soviet Russia; the other ones). But an article I read this morning – a simple report – needs comment. Why? Because I don’t get it. Really, I don’t. Every day I see disgraceful affronts to the Christian faith. There are letters of protest, email petitions, and speeches from the pulpit from the Christians. Yes, the Christians get angry, but no one is harmed, no one dies. More importantly, those responsible are left to create their perversions against the Christians unabated. For the most part, their protests are ignored or mocked by the media and society as a whole. They’re a buncha holy rollers – hahhaha! Lookit the Bible thumpers – snort!

Why is this suddenly bothering me now? We’ve known this disparity, both in religious demeanor and in society’s response, for a long time. Why now? Well, someone created a film which painted the founder of “the religion of peace” in a, shall we say, less than favorable light. The response is as it always is with these “peaceful” practitioners of islam. All hell breaks loose. US embassies in muslim countries are sacked outright – attacks on US soil – and US citizens are murdered by the proponents of this “religion of peace”.

The US response? Apologies all around, and the purported creator of the film is arrested to determine if publishing of his film somehow broke the law. Some contrived issue with probation for some previous conviction that would have made publication of this film a crime – not the content, mind you, but that the responsible individual would have used electronic means to publish it. My, my, my – how hokey do they get? And how absolutely stupid do they take us for?! Had this been a you-tube of this person breaking their neck doing parkour stunts, or bashing Christians, or some other practice viewed as so pedestrian by our government and our society, do you think there would have been a second look? Do you think a posse of sheriffs would have been sent out to bring him in for some contrived violation of parole? Not likely: it was thecontent that has driven his insurrection; not some trumped up violation of conditions of parole.

And am I the only one that sees the hypocrisy? The glaring double standard? Where is the alleged artist who created “Piss Christ”? Was s/he dragged in to languish in a cell somewhere while they trumped up charges to demonstrate that the making of his/her “art” was somehow illegal? Did Øbama or his administration offer any apologies to the mass of offended Christians? No, of course not. No need to pander to the Christians – particularly when you’ve duped the majority of them into believing that taking ones wealth at the point of a gun and giving it to someone else (who may be a slothful generational thief) is a manifestation of Jesus’ call to charitable giving. No need to pander to Christians because they do not believe in demonstrating their angst over your actions using your still-warm corpse.

Washinton DC: Any interpretation of “making no law respecting the establishment of religion” and “equality of each citizen under the law” makes what you’ve done in this case shameful, illegal, and entirely too telling of your motivation.

The Postal Service is at the wailing wall, decrying a huge deficit, and losses in the billions year over year. The internet, it seems, has obviated most of their services; and like the unionized, rock-banging low-tech dinosauric company they’ve always been, they can’t seem to figure out how to fix themselves.

Just in the nick of time, the superhuman brain trust we affectionately call “Congress” has authorized a delay to a required, multi-billion dollar payment to their retirement health care fund to keep them from slipping immediately under the waves, and, most likely, will be making a move to bail the USPS out – which, I pray, will be strenuously resisted by the (supposed) conservatives in the House.

But wait! Darrel Issa has a plan to save the post office without having to bail them out! His plan includes reducing the number of post offices; reducing the number of distribution centers and increasing their efficiency, using more efficient vehicles for mail delivery, etc. This all sounds really great! Why didn’t they… uh, wait: if we do all that, won’t you also have to cut the number of postal workers employed by the USPS? Aren’t they socialist, er, I mean: unionized?

There is little chance that any plan that harms socialists – sorry, Freudian slip – unions will pass the socialist – dagnabbit! Another Freudian slip – Democratic Senate. Sayanara, USPS: your own weight and the stupidity of the current Democratic administration are conspiring to pull you under the waves of evolution. Darwin would be proud of you.

Enemies…domestic. What comes to mind when you see those two words together? Yeah, yeah – I know: the usual suspects: Soros, Pelosi, Couric, Reid, Frank, Matthews, Dodd, Edwards, Obama, etc. How about The Sierra Club? Or, perhaps, The United States Humane Society, or The World Wildlife Fund?

Recently, I came across some very, very good news! Oil fields in Texas, thought exhausted, still contain BILLIONS of barrels of oil locked in the shale below. Better, a process called “hydraulic fracturing” could break it free and enable it to be pumped to the surface! Wow! That could certainly put a dent in our “foreign oil addiction,” couldn’t it? Enter a new domestic enemy: WildEarth Guardians, an organization I’ll bet you’ve never even heard of. Toss in the “sand dune lizard“, and you have a brand new domestic enemy working their destruciton on the US via their favorite weapon: The Environmental Protection Agency, an agency borne of the lie perpetrated against the world regarding the use of DDT – a chemical singly responsible for the elimination of malaria in the US and many nearby regions – a chemical direly needed in foreign lands but, alas, it was maligned by a “study” that suggested it was responsible for birth defects – a study of which the methods and “science” were called into question within the last ten years.

The EPA:The Left’s Sledgehammer against the constitution.

Note: This was the post I was working on when the WordPress update went so horribly south in May of 2011. Though it shows a publication date of 13 September 2011, please not that it is MONTHS older than that…

Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. – James Madison, Federalist #46

The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are – Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story

Contrast that with

Let’s be honest. Mr. Keyes does not believe in common gun control measures like the assault weapons bill. Mr. Keyes does not believe in any limits from what I can tell with respect to the possession of guns, including assault weapons that have only one purpose, to kill people. I think it is a scandal that this president [Bush] did not authorize a renewal of the assault weapons ban. – Barack Hussein Obama

Bill and I announced a proposal to raise the legal age of handgun ownership to 21, and limit purchases of handguns to one per month. – Hillary Rodham Clinton

Once they disarm the people, they can own the people.

WHY PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION?

When they take your car away and send you to wait in line at the prescribed time for a bus or train, they have taken away your ability to choose when and how you go – they have taken away a personal liberty. They get to decide when you go and where you go and how you get there.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

When they tell you what you can and cannot say in public, they have taken away a personal liberty, and they have vioated the tenet of free speech. “Sticks and Stones”. Yes, words can be painful. However, the “court” of civil opinion is far more effective in controlling speech than any judicial outlet can ever be. Their only goal is to exert power over you, the individual. To usurp your ability to subject yourself to public excoriation, or public adulation over your utterances. They have substituted their control for self control.

PC translations are also pretty damned handy to make their nefarious goals seem ethical, and your ethical goals seem nefarious. Choosing a term to “soften the edges” of what their actual goal is, while putting a hard edge on the opposite stance. Psychology at its best.

ENTITLEMENTS

We speak of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; not the guarantee of happiness. It has always, at least until the 1930s, been considered the responsibility of the individual to attain that happiness; not the responsibilty of those who have made their way to it to provide it to others by threat of government.

THE PRICE OF GASOLINE

First, when I choose to live in Canada, Europe, or some other Godforsaken plot of earth outside the US, then I will care what they pay for gasoline (or anything else, for that matter). Since I live in the US, what is paid for gasoline in other regions is irrelevant. Throwing up the cost of items in a foreign country when its price starts rising here is a favorite ploy of the US media. They want you to be a european. They want the US to look like Europe. I don’t. You shouldn’t, either. You should not care what is paid for items outside the US. You will never hear me say: “Oh, well! At least we’re not as bad as Britain yet.” Instead you will hear me rail against the idiots in Washington who are causing our prices to rise when they need not!

If we are allowed to drill our own, the price of oil will definitely start to fall on international markets. Gas here will likely come down. How far? Well, the Fed’ral Gummint has their hooks into each gallon to the tune of $0.184 per. Most states tack on another $0.20 per. Then there’s all the union wages that go into drilling it, pumping it, refinining it, trucking it etc. Land and mineral leases, corporate overhead, equipment and salaries – oh, and the Fed’ral Gummint has their hooks into the drilling and production costs, too, through licensing fees, regulations, certifications, etc. True for state and locals in other areas well, hey? Anyone who thinks the halcion days of sub $1/gallon gas will ever come back before there is significant reforms of gummint and of labor is… well, they’re smoking some pretty refined crack. Because of the costs imposed by the USofA, it’s state and local governments, and it labor, it is only profitable to drill and produce here when oil is as high as it is. Government needs to back off, big time, in terms of taxation, to be sure, but they are also producing REGULATIONS that make it fiscally irresponsible for any sentient being to want to get into the oil business here in the good ol’ USofA: if the price of oil is not artificially high, it is too costly to produce it here – thanks in full to Uncle Sam and his taxing and meddling.

Much, much work to be done. Personally, I don’t think any of the so-called “tea party conservatices” recently elected to the House and Senate have the stomach for what must be done. I hold out no hope for any positive change in my lifetime…

“[W]e’ve allowed a vast majority of … cash to be concentrated in the hands of just a few people. … That’s not theirs, that’s a national resource, that’s ours.” –alleged filmmaker Michael Moore

How does this dimwitted boob figure that, I wonder? And what of the millions he and his ilk derive from this supposed national resource pool for the crap they put on the screen that their sycophants, socialist ideologues, etc. go out to spend THEIR portion of this supposed national resourse to see? Have you seen Michael Moore turn HIS millions back into the Treasury? Of course not! He’s not TALKING about himself. Like all the other socialist bastards, he’s only talking about YOU.

I think they’re using for brains the same product my dog converts his dogfood into. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for this… for this transformed bull food they come up with.

I recall seeing “Sportsmen For Øbama” bumper stickers back during the 2008 elections and thinking How on God’s green earth can any sportsman be for anyone with such a clear bent against their pastimes? I mean, The Great 0ne didn’t even pose as a sportsman as others (re: Kerry) have in the past. I had discussions with many of these liberal sportsmen at the time, pointing out the risk their position poses to their favorite pastimes, but to no avail. They wouldn’t hear me.

I’m not terribly fond of fishing (my wife killed that early. Girl’s? Ya wanna keep your man away from the fishing hole? Use this line: “I’ll just fish off the dock here while you clean what we already caught.” Then proceed to catch more fish than the apostles pulled up after Jesus told them where to cast their net. I had never spent so much time hunched over the cleaning table before that – and I never will again. Lost my taste for fishing that day, to be true…), but I am an avid shooter and hunter. Your buddy-ol-pal in the Oval Office is circumventing the will of the people by circumventing congress (not that THEY’RE much like the will of the people recently, but they do still know which side their bread is buttered on with regard to issues like this) in directing the EPA – that’s right: the counter-constitutional bureaucracy formed during ANOTHER famous failed democratic presidency – to regulate the use of ubiquitous LEAD in fishing tackle and ammunition.

So, now besides being taxed out of the fields and streams, you’ll not be able to afford the accouterments of your avocation.

Since I don’t make over $250,000 a year, you’d think I’d still have hunting and fishing cash – but that hurdle keeps dropping lower and lower as they keep finding new ways to draw the money from my pocket! There’s the ever more-encompassing AMT. There’s the increases in government fees for things like passports; hunting and fishing licenses. There’s the expiring “Bush tax cuts”. The proposed change in the FICA tax ceiling… A creative lot, are these elected thieving bastards!

So what are the alternatives to lead? Tungsten comes to mind as a commonly offered alternative. As of this writing, the spot market price for lead is $0.942/lb. Tungsten is $13.381/lb, or fourteen times more expensive!

So tell me? How often can you afford to go afield with a $99.30 box of shotshells? Does $170.40 seem too much to pay for a box of tungsten fishing sinkers? You know: just like the lead ones that you used to pay $12 for at your favorite sporting goods store, only 14 times more expensive?

So, Sportsmen for Øbama: Can you hear me now?

Well, know this: Øbama, in his move to use the bureaucracy to do this is indicating that he doesn’t WANT to hear from you! He doesn’t care what you think or want. He didn’t ride into Washington on your backs, but on the backs of all those environmental special interest groups and other un-American factions.You simply served in the supporting role of useful idiot. So, step right up to the counter, sons and daughters, and get what you asked for. Unfortunately, though, those of us who knew better get to suffer right alongside you.

So, James Cameron, director of Avatar wanted a “high noon” showdown debate with the infidels of global warming who don’t believe that the science around the global warming hysteria is science, let alone settled. And, of course, it played out like one of those old westerns where the braggadocios junior gunslinger, after ever-escalating demands and rhetoric, backs out of the fight and quietly slinks away as the appointed hour approaches – no debate was held; I guess Cameron had only a knife for the impending gunfight.

Is it just me, or do others sense that something is just not right with the people who populate the big and little screens, and those who work in their shadow? Are these people like this before they get there, or is there something in the water in Hollywood?

I mean, if you think about it, these people universally think they know best. This jackass even believed that he could help the BP situation – because he filmed underwater scenes for Titanic, I guess. His plan? Why, to drop a camera to “image” the leak – existing cameras already doing so notwithstanding. How would this help, you ask? Why, using BP’s images “you’re asking the perpetrator to give you the video of the crime scene.” (Honest, folks: you can’t make this stuff up…)

So, Cameron is an expert on climatology AND on deep water disasters. I’m surprised that he didn’t offer to tap his vast experience gained through The Terminator series do develop a Dutch cyborg to swim down and stick its thumb in the hole.

Look: Cameron has made some great movies. I really enjoyed The Terminator. Avatar, even with its anti-everything-man-has-ever-created-or-done bent was still vastly entertaining. Titanic…

…Mmmmm, Titanic not so much. Nobody’s perfect.

But despite his movie making prowess, making movies about stuff does not imply that you are an expert with regard to said stuff. (Nor does watching those movies, folks.)

Me? I say stick to what you’re good at. The only people who take efforts such as Cameron’s seriously either have suffered extensive mercury exposure (and that’s probably why they want all these mercury-based light bulbs in all our homes…), or are cut from the same cloth.

Since Øbama and his minions will likely go after it (he stated no less in an interview, didn’t he?) – to change it to something that is “more inclusive”, “less war-like”, with pink fuzzy bunnies and free handouts for all of our enemies, I’d just like you all to have a chance to read our ENTIRE national anthem as written by Francis Scott Key; not as rewritten or truncated by those who would have it otherwise:

Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early lightWhat so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet waveO’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:‘Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it waveO’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly sworeThat the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,A home and a country should leave us no more!Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.No refuge could save the hireling and slaveFrom the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth waveO’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall standBetween their loved home and the war’s desolation!Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued landPraise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall waveO’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Well, well. So now we have a “bipartisan” health care bill in the house, according to that wicked witch of the west, because Joseph Cao (RINO, LA) voted for this huge wedge of socialist pie-a-la-mode.

Mr. Steele: every day, just about, I get a mailing from you about how the Republican party is the party to save the country from this upcoming abyss of socialism, from this obama-nation. Mr. Steele, once again your party has demonstrated that it clearly IS NOT that party. Sure, there are some members of the Republican party that could form the nucleus of just such a turn-about, but it has once again demonstrated that the Republican party is just some club where people who want to wear a particular label gather – whether they espouse the tenets assumed to be associated with that label or not.

The socialist democrats gather their strength in the fact that, likely as the result of abuses or head injuries throughout their collective childhood, they FIRMLY espouse their tenets, and lust after their party goals to the extent that they are more than willing to ignore the desires of their mewling constituency to move those goals forward. But the key is they move together. There is STRENGTH in a unified front, even if the goals of that front are insanity; anathema to the concepts and goals which saw this nation into existence.

So what am I to make, Mr. Steele, of these Joseph Caos, these Olympia Snowes? How are they allowed to continue to move through the political circles carrying a label so contrary to their actual ideals and goals? Let me ask you: can I take a bottle of DrainoTM and relabel it as V8TM without suffering some legal action from CampbellTMover misusing their label? How is it that the performance of Cao and Snowe and their ilk is any different? Isn’t false advertising illegal in these United States? By their continued performance, didn’t these “Republicans” campaign and sell themselves to the public under false claims?

EJECT them, Mr. Steele. Stop allowing the wicked witch of the west and her colleague in the Senate and oval office to claim the prize of bipartisanship because they manage to insert an imposter into your ranks. Do not let those who do not act as the Republican party wishes them to act to continue to call themselves Republicans, and maybe one day you will number me among your ranks.

In the meantime, I will continue to vote as a conservative constitutionalist. You? Save your stamps. I don’t even open your mailings any longer. Especially those from that other “Republican” McCain.